Donating to software projects - or, more accurately, open source projects. It's hardly new, it's hardly rare, and I'm sure most of us have donated at some point. That's probably why Canonical has opened Ubuntu up for donations - but with a twist.

I don't have a problem with the concept of Unity, even if it's just to stop someone like my mum launching 15 copies of Firefox but I think most people who find Unity isn't for them would argue for choice instead.

Ubuntu 12.04 is available in just about every possible dressing except Gnome 2, the popularity of Linux Mint could be largely attributed to this demand not being met officially.

Interesting strategy. Since Canonical is a private company, there is currently no way for Ubuntu stakeholders (users) to control the path of their operating system. Currently, people who have strong relationships with Ubuntu as a product have only two options: 1) rant/rave about changes to the OS in blogs or forums or 2) fork Ubuntu. The problem with the first choice is that it is passive-aggressive; it does not have enough sway to ultimately change the OS in one way or the other, and there is no way to differentiate between genuine user concerns and Ubuntu-hating trolls. The problem with the second choice (forking) is that it is very resource-intensive (actually duplicates resources), and does not guarantee that the entire user base will follow suit (see: Linux Mint). Accepting donations and allowing the users to funnel them into different projects allows Canonical to objectively see what users really want the end product to look like. I think it's a brilliant strategy.

The FreeBSD foundation does something similar, although it is more along the lines of "give us suggestions" rather than "this is where your money is going to go". When I donated two years ago, I wanted to see the money go to the KMS project, for example, but I have no idea if that really happened that way or if the $$$ just went into a general fund.

I feel that it is very much a good thing that users do not have a direct say in what canonical does, as if they did, they would probably still be running gmome2 or cinnamon, and I *despised* gnome2.

Unity is what made me finally swap to Linux, after years of going back and forth, drooling over KDE features.Nowadays, I refuse to use a desktop without searchable menus instead of the old heirachical model.

Point is, those who yell the loudest are not necessarily always representative of every user, and if they had their say, I wouldn't be using this lovely, keyboard-based UI, but would be stuck waving a dammed mouse around every time I wanted to open a file or application, or access a non-hotkeyed menu item, like opening a VPN connection.

I actually like Unity too. It has some flaws, like the faux-OS X "global menubar" and the close icon being on the left, but the alternative is Gnome 3, Gnome 2 and "3 guys hacking" (cinnamon). Gnome 2 and Cinnamon feel a bit dated for my taste. And KDE lost it's way long ago IMO.

Canonical could play their cards right (for example, be carefull with X.org upgrades) and take advantage of the radical shift Windows 8 is doing to grab some marketshare.

There is also gnome-panel (as in: Gnome3-fallback), which is what I've been using ever since Unity got pushed. Perhaps too 'dated' for you, but I'm surprised not more people are focussing on it. I prefer it to Mate.

Agreed. Cinnamon should really have been based on bringing gnome2's functionality back into gnome classic, as opposed to what they seem to be, which is a windows style desktop.It's not about being new and shiny, I just like that I can do so much more from my keyboard now, without having to touch the mouse.That, and search based launching is much quicker than navigating my highly organised and deep folder structure.

Ubuntu is, as the article suggests, a project with several revenue streams to begin with. And let's face it: One of the biggest reasons people run F/OSS software is not because of the philosophy but because it is freely available. Given that a few other distros have done almost as much as Ubuntu to push GNU/Linux forward without a steady revenue stream makes me think we should be "donating" elsewhere.

Take Slackware, for example. The oldest surviving distro, barely more than a one-man operation the entire time, and yet Pat has managed to not only survive but make a modest living doing nothing but maintaining Slackware. It is perhaps the most stable and unchanging distro out there; it is often said that you can leave the project in version 9 or 10 and pick it back up at -current with barely a hiccup. I'm living proof of that: I recently went back to Slackware with the release of 14, and I'm immediately at home. Even more, for once I actually like KDE enough now to use it daily. Will I be buying a box set from Slackware.com? You bet your ass I will! And I will be donating to the KDE SC project as well, since I now get a hell of a lot of work done in it. But I don't expect Pat or the KDE maintainers to make changes just because I paid for their beer this week. I'm content to trust them to continue the great work they do.

I think this is a bad idea for Ubuntu, and while it may just be an attempt to "keep it real" to the F/OSS users out there who do value openness above price, it also seems just a bit disingenuous. I have to wonder how much of my money would really go towards the area of improvement I want it to. I'm guessing it's more of a slightly underhanded way to gauge which areas of the OS people want improved the most, and the money is just one more revenue stream for the project.

And don't get me wrong: I don't think really big, successful projects like Ubuntu should go without funding. After all, for it to be as good a project as it is (and let's be honest, it's the most forked/expanded upon modern distro for good reason), it must have the money to pay for support and development. I'm just saying I'd love to see the donated money instead go to Debian. After all, Ubuntu owes its very existence to that particular project.

Slackware 2.0 was my first distribution, but which users outside OSNews type of users, get to use it on the desktop?

Well I used it long before I was an OSNews regular, so...

I get what you're saying though.

When Pat decides to stop doing it, Slackware will die, it is that simple.

I don't know about that. I have no insight into the inner workings of Pat's mind, of course, but I would like to think that he has a plan for core contributors like Eric and Robby to take over in his absence. It has a large enough user base to continue thriving, though I don't doubt there would be changes. A lot of the way the distro works is a reflection of Pat's personality and philosophy. I think that's one reason the distro tends to mesh very well with certain people and confuse the hell out of others.

I think there's definitely an age barrier too; most of the people in my tech circles who have even heard of Slackware are over 30 years old. That's not to say that all younger people are clueless about old distros, but those of us in our 30s and older grew up in the same era as Pat and probably had similar experiences with computers. Slackware was not the first GNU/Linux I ever tried, but it was the first one I could get to work properly on my hardware, and that was due to how it just kind of made sense to me. I came up with DOS, CP/M and the TRS-80 so I wasn't afraid of the command line.

Strangely enough, I had the same experience with Slackware hardware support when I first switched to Linux, and I wasn't even in kindergarten when Pat forked SLS, let alone installing operating systems. My Athlon XP based system happily ran Slackware for years when nothing else would boot on it.

Glad to see someone from your generation with a genuine appreciation for good software.

Honestly, I think if I had slaved away at it long enough I could have gotten Red Hat (or Corel or whatever I was trying to run at the time) to install properly. But those distros just seemed so obtuse and Slackware was much more straightforward.

I actually remember getting Red Hat (v3 I think) to work on my P3. A mate of mine had downloaded via dial-up using this download manager that would reconnect whenever it dropped out (and it did. A lot). Took days, as I recall.

Neither of us had ever seen linux before, let alone installed it, and I remember it being an absolute nightmare. Might not have helped that we were both quite stoned back then, and being high didn't really help with figuring out how the XF86Config monitor settings worked! ;-)

Amazing satisfaction at the end of it though, and it was definitely one of the experiences that I will always remember that got me totally hooked on computers.

"- making people release software that compile only on ubuntu by default"

Which ones? And what does "compile by default" means? Almost nothing "compile by default" on anything.

"- making people release software that only works on ubuntu (incl. proprietary software)"

Which ones? And why would it not work on another distro with the same libraries installed?

"- making unity"

A lot of people are using Unity and liking it. Probably more than all the arch users put together (and I'm one of them).

You're forgetting Launchpad (which is pretty big), Upstart, the Software Store, etc... but the biggest achievement is releasing every six months the most popular Linux distro, the only one ables to make the "mainstream" news and attracts commercial softwares.

I'm not using Ubuntu, but I won't insult everyone who use it and work on it just because it's not made for me.

"- making people release software that compile only on ubuntu by default"

Which ones? And what does "compile by default" means? Almost nothing "compile by default" on anything.

I guess he means software that relies for compilation on the patches that Ubuntu has applied to their packages.

"- making people release software that only works on ubuntu (incl. proprietary software)"

Which ones? And why would it not work on another distro with the same libraries installed?

This probably refers to dynamically linking against the Ubuntu version of some library. Other distros may not have the same version/soname which breaks dynamic linking.

Instances of both problems can be found easily via Google.

I'm not using Ubuntu, but I won't insult everyone who use it and work on it just because it's not made for me.

No one should belittle what Canonical has achieved. After all, Ubuntu has brought Linux to more people's computers than all other distros combined. However such a dominance is not without problems, as has been seen during the browser wars where websites were written with only MSIE in mind. Now we are in the situation that some Linux software is created with only Ubuntu in mind.

Looking at the list, I'm wondering which of the options would be most popular among OSNews readers. I'm pretty sure the one about Debian and the other Ubuntu flavours would win out here, and I must admit that I personally would opt for more and better support for Kubuntu as well.

Yep. You guessed my response. Nailed it. Those are the two I could even consider picking from. The main reason being, well, those Ubuntu variants actually have sane desktop environments and better coordination with the parent distro is always a good thing.

As for "make the desktop more amazing" (what? Are you kidding? Unity? Amazing?) and "phone and tablet versions of Ubuntu" (is that not what Unity is at least partially meant to be designed for? Netbooks and other portable devices with small screens?), I really couldn't care less. Unity is... just not worthy of donating for, IMO.

Also, as for donating just as a tip for Canonical, no thanks. Donating to improve drivers/hardware support would not be too bad, as long as they trickle into other distros.

I think the timing of this is kind of funny. Just after Mark announces that all searches of the "home" machine will also be sent to Amazon for advertisement purposes. Though they claimed it was not really meant to be advertising and just there to "help" users, it was obvious what its intent really was. This seems to just further reflect that: Canonical wants more money. No problem there; I just don't see why they didn't do this first instead of implementing a half-assed Amazon product search with some serious privacy problems in Unity. It would've been better to just ask for donations in the first place.

By the way... does anyone know if Mark ever officially explained is extremely snobbish "we have root" comment that he posted on a blog post of his a while back? It seemed that every time anyone asked him to explain, they were ignored and received no reply. And I would say that the way it was worded certainly calls for an official explanation.

"By the way... does anyone know if Mark ever officially explained is extremely snobbish 'we have root' comment that he posted on a blog post of his a while back?"

It's about implied trust in one's distro.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Canonical-We-Have-Root-Trust-Us-2945...
"Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err"

When Mark said this, he alluded to the fact that every Ubuntu user already trusts Ubuntu with their system updates, and then he suggests that because of this implicit trust, we should not regard Canonical's data collection of local queries to be an extension of trust. While I understand what he is saying, I don't agree with him. It is unfortunate that Canonical is collecting this private data regardless of whether they're trustworthy enough to do what they say they're going to do.

The article linked above made a very good point:
"We do trust Canonical with all our data, but this type of controlling view emanating from Canonical's founder is rather worrisome because it looks like an 'Apple' standpoint: the company knows what's best for the users and they will decide what the users need, not the other way around."

I would gladly donate money though to get those problems that concern me get fixed. The idea to let the donators decide what to do with the money donated to Ubunu is basically spot-on. It is however imho only the first step. The categories are too broad for example, I don't want to sponsor Gnubuntu or other derivates, but only KDE (more precisely KDE Akonadi & Kmail integration with a Zarafa Server) - this seems not possible via this categories. Maybe a kickstarter- or bounty- or whatever- program where problems could be solved for money by freelance programmers upstream and then passed down to the different distros would make more sense. This could also empower the linux users and integrate them into the decisions, where the Linux Desktop is heading.

The concept of a BDFL has it's advantages and I don't want to outright reject a BDFL. (I personally think that most of Mr Shuttleworth decisions of recent times are bad, but that is just me). BDFLs however don't mix well with a community-paid distro. If users pay for it, they want a say. Thus I think canoncial should clarify which aspects of future decisions can be influenced by donating / community voting and what is reserved for the BDFL's authority.

I'm not donating to distros in general. I believe the distro makers are not the ones that deserve the money the most. Excuse me, they do deserve the money, but the distros are the most visible work to the users and they require the least work. In other word, they already receive the most money for working the least. That is why we have like 1000 distros.
Look, we have like 1000 distros, 50 desktop environments, like 10 or 20 browsers, 4 or 5 GUI toolkits, 2 or 3 kernels, 1 compiler.
So where does my money go? To the ones that are the most hidden and do the biggest work. I donate to upstream projects, like GNU.
If Ubuntu disappear tomorrow, it wouldn't hurt at all. I can just pick one of the 500 other Debian spins and the experience will not be affected, maybe that will even be better.
On the other hand, if gcc disappear, the whole free software landscape will be changed, if it survives.
So here is how my money should be split:
€100 to low level stuff (gcc, binutils, etc)
€10 to higher level stuff (Qt, gtk, etc)
€5 to DE (KDE, GNOME, etc)
€2 to applications (Firefox, liberOffice, etc)
€1 to core distros (Debian, Mageia, etc) - a core distro is a distro whose authors provide a significant advancement to free software, like apt-get or the mcc.
€0 to spin distros. There are too much of these already.

No, that is not what I am saying.
I do roll my LFS distro BTW but that does not matter to the point.
The effort of packaging IS worthy.
What I'm saying is that:
The packaging is the final step. You have to take into account all the effort and weight it. When you buy a commercial operating system like Windows for $100/year, something like $1 goes to the packaging an 99$ goes to development. With free software, the opposite is happening.
The effort required to package the software into a distro is relatively easy when compared to develop the software, espicially since the developers use autotools and even go as far as providing rpm spec files and stuff. Look at all the Debian spins. Sometimes, it's just a new wallpaper and some software selection.
Ubuntu is about Unity and the community. They put some real efforts in developing the community. They is worth something but don't forget the montain they sit on. The software they use is worth a lot, starting with Debian and GNU.

The effort required to package the software into a distro is relatively easy when compared to develop the software, espicially since the developers use autotools and even go as far as providing rpm spec files and stuff. Look at all the Debian spins. Sometimes, it's just a new wallpaper and some software selection.

This is one of the reasons Linux distributions have failed in the desktop for normal users.

You need more than just pack a set of .rpms with an install script into a CD.

The failure is 100% dependant on the goals.
I believe Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia is a success as they made the GNU/Linux/KDE stack work in a usable and integrated fashion with urpmi and MCC and random people can use it without deep knowledge and tweaking.
Ubuntu is a success as they made millions of people aware of GNU.
You should donate to projects you value the most. If your goal is to improve the user experience, donate ro upstream projects. If your goal is to improve visibility and knowledge of free software, donate to Ubuntu. If your goal is both, donate a little to each. And if you just don't care about it, donate to the red cross or whatever.

If the goal is "big userbase", then yes, Ma* has failed when compared to other distros like Ubuntu. Ma* is still a success if the goal is "good user experience" when compared to other distros like Ubuntu.
You donate to your distro and I can only command you for that. I just want you to be aware that, while your distro probably does a good job at packaging and spreading the software, you should not forget that the user experience mostly come from upstream projects from the DE, the toolkits and up to the compiler. They are less visible but they too can use some donations.

Strange, Unity wasn't forced on Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu. It wasn't forced upon Arch, Mandriva, Fedora or any other distro... And it is not forced on people running Ubuntu but choosing to install and run another DE.

So.. who is "us all"? Who are the people FORCED to use Unity? Because the way I see it, Unity is only another DE, installed by default in Ubuntu, that people can use willingly.

Is it any wonder those users who liked Ubuntu's Gnome desktop became so upset when suddenly everything they liked about the distro was removed? When there were no options to run Gnome any more? It was classic bait and switch and everyone who is honest knows it.

If Canonical wanted to have a different desktop, one that they built themselves, they could have very easily started a new branch with Unity as its focus. Or they could have allowed users to choose to continue running Gnome by selecting "Gnome Classic" like they had as an option in earlier versions. They did not do this. Instead they tried to force Unity down the throats of their users by removing the option to run Gnome. They fundamentally changed the product while retaining the same name.

"So, whoever is behind Kubuntu now is forcing KDE upon their users, and are evil?"

You've got that logic backwards...Kubuntu would be evil if it forced something like Unity or Gnome upon it's users.

You can count me in as an ubuntu user who was peeved when my gnome 2 desktop was not only lost in the Ubuntu upgrade, but also because there was no way to manually reconstruct what I had lost in either Unity or gnome3. They imposed new DE environments on us largely for their own benefit rather than ours. The "fallback" mode was nothing more than a crappy theme that didn't restore gnome2 functionality.

I can't blame Canonical for gnome's abandonment of the more mature gnome2 desktop. But I can blame Canonical for bad execution and disregarding user's needs. Consequently mint's user-centric focus really impressed me and I place more trust in them not to leave end users in the cold.

Ubuntu is the official distro from Canonical, not a Gnome spin-off. If you want that, you use Gnomebuntu. It's perfectly normal for Canonical to integrate their main software into their main product.

"Instead they tried to force Unity down the throats of their users by removing the option to run Gnome."

This is untrue. You can still run whatever DE you like under Ubuntu, including Gnome. Most distros only have one desktop installed by default, and sometime that desktop can change radically with a simple update (Gnome-Shell in Fedora, for example).

"They fundamentally changed the product while retaining the same name."

There is nothing wrong with that. Windows and Mac OS evolved a lot over the year, always using the same branding, "Windows" or"Mac OS". They don't create a derivative to sell their new software. They promote those changes in their main product.

"If Ubuntu deserves donations" is rather strange language to me: AFAIK one donates to something one wants to go on acting as it is, so it is me who decides its worthiness. Only a criminal organization would be 'unworthy' or 'undeserving' of receiving donations (from whomever). Of course they have other revenue lines and so what?

Not that I am eager to donate to them but... deserving?? Do you think the money goes to Shuttleworth?

So you would donate to Microsoft or Apple then? And I don't mean donating by buying their product. I mean buying their product and then sending them money on top of it just because you use their products daily and enjoy them. I think most people would find that very odd; the whole idea of a donation is to support an entity or individual who is not already rolling in cash.

Fact is, Ubuntu is a product of a commercial venture. While you don't pay for the OS outright, you pay in other ways, most recently via the Amazon shenanigans. Just because they use open source software in their product doesn't mean they are a charity case. Overall Ubuntu is a great distro and I'm glad it exists, especially since it has brought new blood into the user base. But I'm not comfortable donating to such a large commercial venture, especially since they already make money off of each installation.

Maybe it's the capitalist in me, but I feel that a company should be able to stand on its own feet based on product sales. If a company is in need of donations, they should reevaluate their business model.

Indeed, I do find it weird that a profitable company is seeking donations, and I would find it equally weird to donate to a thriving company, whether it's Canonical, Microsoft, Google, or even lesser companies who turn a profit. Again, maybe that's just because I'm an American. We still tip our servers so who's to say we are correct?

Is it the case that you do only what you need? Convenience is what drives most of our actions, not bare necessity. Otherwise, car would probably not exist (as a matter of fact, probably NO device would exist, not even the wheel).

"If I can get people donating money why should I not try?" That is what is behind this idea. And why not?

It might be sufficiently hardened against flooding,but it seems frought with difficulties nonetheless. What if only one user donates $ 2,000,000 to a feature the rest of the world couldn't care less about?

What will Canonical do? Look at the number of donations to an item and strike the above item as not really sought after or are they going to look at the amount of cash and go "We can't decide to not implement this feature! We've received a boatload of cash for this." What is the determining factor here?

People significantly donating to unpopular items will probably get miffed anyways. Their cash will never lead to direct improvements in the areas they are interested in (whatever the methodology) and the one who pays for a specified item expects to get his moneys worth. To me it seems like another Ubuntu headache in the making.

Just a thought, but maybe this is just a way to poll its userbase for direction, without making the poll easily crashable.

Interesting idea, except Shuttleworth and by extension Canonical have made it clear that they don't really care about what their users want. Over and over and over again. Consider how even with a monetary barrier to prevent trolls or manipulation they don't have any option which allows users to comment on whether they would like to see Unity go away or have an option allowing for MATE.

This latest furore over Amazon where Shuttleworth facetiously quipped about already having root on our machines was just the latest in a long chain of instances where they have disrespected their userbase and ignored any feedback to go ahead and do whatever they wanted to do from the start.

Yes, nobody will like this, but I think Linux needs to get it's act together. What we need is two distros that Devs can work with. One sever (Red hat) and one Consumer desktop (Ubuntu(s)).

Then we can focus hard on those and get them working perfectly, because, unless you are blind, Microsoft has fell into a ditch and this is the chance for Unix to pop up and say Hi to everybody.

Since Microsoft will be doing it's thing, leaving OEMs behind, Canonical and Red Hat needs to take over that market. I personally use Xubuntu and would not mind at all donating to help Linux in general, it deserves it; hell of a lot more than Microsoft does.

What is it with people and their ignorance, so blind as to see that Microsoft doesn't care about them, only it's share holders. Microsoft is dirty, they have more than proved that with NSA backdoors and strong arming OEMs.

Time to put Microsoft to sleep and clean those dirty Windows for good. Linux is not a hobby OS anymore, but people who roll their own distro are hurting Linux more than helping. We need consolidation.

I'm sorry, but this "we need only two distro's to conquer the world" is bunk. Even with only Red Hat on the server and Ubuntu on the desktop, we have two different implementations of Linux on our machines. The cure for inconsistent, low level API/ABI compatibility is not forcing a mono-culture, but consensus and collaboration on a set of base requirements.

Never mind that displacing MS Windows also means shifting the entire software eco system over to Linux. That is a tall order.

Oh, Unix already popped up its head and said hello. Mac OS X, iOS, Android...

I'm sorry Lucas, but you are looking at this with heavily MS colored glasses. As such, you can only see diversity as fragmentation.

From a FOSS community member I expect a bit more. We should know better than trying to press Linux in an MS mold.

The diversity of Linux doesn't seem to matter on tablets, routers, super computers, wrist watches, space stations and a plethora of other things. It's just on the desktop that it fights an uphill battle against the incumbent OS supplier.

I'm sorry Lucas, but you are looking at this with heavily MS colored glasses. As such, you can only see diversity as fragmentation.

You can find plenty of posts from Linux advocates decrying fragmentation.

The diversity of Linux doesn't seem to matter on tablets, routers, super computers, wrist watches, space stations and a plethora of other things.

Tablets are all using the same Android base, even Kindle and Nook tablets. So they basically use the same distro with some API and UI differences, they aren't fighting each other over basics like sound APIs or program folder locations. Android tablets also have a proprietary friendly software deployment system. Linux distros are still built with the assumption that everything is open source.

Servers and space stations are managed by experts and don't have the same requirements as consumer devices. Wristwatches and toys only require a very slim command line Linux base that doesn't need to be updated.

It's just on the desktop that it fights an uphill battle against the incumbent OS supplier.

Having hundreds of distros results in redundant work. That's an inescapable fact. Now if all those distros had a specific purpose it might be justifiable but the vast majority are general purpose desktops.

The incumbent OS supplier already dropped the ball with Vista and Linux wasn't there to return. Windows 8 won't be any different.

The problem is not Windows, it is Linux. The desktop isn't ready for mainstream use and is in fact too late for the party. Android with a mouse and keyboard will be as close as it gets.

The fragmentation is not in the number of Distro's. All distributions are in essence (re)packaging of upstream code (in that sense there is only minimal duplication of effort). They are all source compatible.

The fragmentation sits at the library level. There is no common target base, but this is a failure in consensus and collaboration, not in the number of distro's. Of course killing all distro's but one would solve this problem instantly (nobody is confused about the direction under a dictator), but it would also destroy the beneficial variety in the distro ecosphere.

That Linux doesn't make significant inroads when MS falters, isn't because e.g. Ubuntu isn't ready for the desktop. It's because Linux isn't used to push affordable and believable desktop systems to the consumer. There are a few vendors like ZaReason, System76 with halfway comparable systems to Windows machines, but you also pay a premium for them. Then we have some small community projects like KDE's vivaldi tablet or Linux Mint's mintBox.

The systems of dedicated sellers like ZaReason and System76 are overpriced from a consumer perspective. The smaller community projects have the right idea with smaller, more affordable machines, but they don't have reach.

If a systems manufacturer/vendor could produce something like a mintBox, be it x86 or ARM based, complete with a (modest) screen and mouse + keyboard for an affordable price and push this in the market as the affordable, hassle free Everyman's PC, I think it could have a shot. But it would need to be marketed right and the vendor should have a long term plan.

If a systems manufacturer/vendor could produce something like a mintBox, be it x86 or ARM based, complete with a (modest) screen and mouse + keyboard for an affordable price and push this in the market as the affordable, hassle free Everyman's PC, I think it could have a shot. But it would need to be marketed right and the vendor should have a long term plan.

You stopped describing linux as soon as you said "hassle free everyman's pc". That is not what linux is in most cases, especially for people new to linux. There's always a steady flow of users trying to fix something that broke either seemingly by itself or via "updating". I'm not saying anything new though. Why linux isn't successful as a desktop, and why it's not even close to being ready to be has been discussed to death many times over. The linux desktop continues to be in the same old rut and we continue to have the exact same conversation about it. And that will probably continue to be true for the foreseeable future. future.

One thing that often is missed is clarity on process, accountability and results. I'd rather Ubuntu give more details and say something along:
1) User donations are used as strong hints toward supporting certain piece of development.
2) Come join an Ubuntu Architect Advisory Board every month to discuss how the money will be spent and on what features, e.g. (A) take some of the money and offer upstream people to finance their work (say, give Thomas Bernard cash for developing miniupnpd and minissdpd); or (B) finance better integration of ubuntu apps within the eco system; or (C) hire somebody (say, Dave Taht) to fix bugs (e.g. Dave's work on Bufferbloat!), (D) ... you get the idea. We should know exactly HOW MUCH is granted TO WHOM, FOR WHAT, perhaps BY WHEN. Otherwise, this will be just a black hole for money and will not gain trust from users.
3) Produce reports. We need to know something along this.
In Q3 we've:
- donated 1500$ to various upstream people: John Doe (app X), Jane Doe (app Y) -- which allowed to deliver: IPv6 support in app X, fixed stability in app Y
- donated 700$ to various projects. They are: gcc, ... - the list of deliverables are: ...
- spent 500$ on hiring people to integrate apps you asked for
- left with 350$ which we're goint to reinvest into something else...

I would vote for stability which has detoriated quickly over the last two years. In fact this has driven me back to Debian, not Unity. I felt that unity had some advantages over gnome3, though I still liked the latter better. Gnome2 is history, it is being obseleted by the trend of of ultra low displays.

I used Ubuntu for a brief period but feel they are going in the wrong direction with the UI. I do check it out every year or so just to see where they ar taking this distro but as far as I am concerned, it is going in the wrong direction. No money from me. I would much rather (and do) support distros that provide me with the tools I want to use.

Years ago Ubuntu was an important distribution. It was an easy way to get Debian installed and working with printer and video drivers. Ubuntu made those things easy and built a large following. Today, almost any distro is easy to install and get drivers working. Nvidia and AMD provide better installation programs. There isn't much to set Ubuntu apart anymore, so they started pushing their own DE to be unique, which is why their popularity is fading. Even Slackware with slackpkg and sbopkg, is easy to install and add software these days.

I get it, you guys don't use Ubuntu and neither do I, but the dismissive quality of so many of the comments here ignores the fact that many people DO use Ubuntu and this seems to be a perfectly valid way for Ubuntu to generate some funds and ostensibly give users the chance to throw their support behind whatever is important to them. I wouldn't be bothered if some other distros followed suit.

I stopped using Ubuntu after Unity became the default interface. I'm not keen to Mark Shuttleworth's posing as the owner of truth on his sayings about on how technology should be. In fact, I despise the way he goes about with it.

Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04 were perfect replacements for Windows XP at their time and they were superior but Microsoft learned their lesson and released a strong competitor called Windows 7. After I saw the first Unity mock-up drawings on Shuttleworth's blog, I thought that it was the beginning of the end, and it didn't take that much time for me to go distro hopping again and settle with RHEL.

There is the saying that Canonical never contributes back like Red Hat does.

I see no reason to donate to Ubuntu. It also doesn't make sense donating to a multi millionaire, does it?

If I ever am to donate to something, it's because I like it and want to support it. But support Ubuntu as it is now? No way, ever.

It is funny they should now ask for donations. How much money did they waste for a commercial stunt, sending everybody who asked dozens of pressed CDs?
Helping people who don't have access to a fast internet connection is of course a good idea, but don't send them to everybody who just asks.